Maths
Irlam Primary School is committed to ensuring that you will benefit from a rich and inspiring mathematical education which will establish a secure foundation upon which you will be able to build throughout your life. Throughout your time here, we will help you to develop an appreciation of the beauty and power of Mathematics and a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about the subject.
The content of our lessons will be in line with the programmes of study for Mathematics which form part of the National Curriculum. In line with the aims of the National Curriculum, we will ensure that all pupils are taught a progressively challenging and deep curriculum which enables all learners to become fluent in the fundamentals of Mathematics; reason mathematically and solve problems using their mathematical skills.
Irlam Primary School want you to understand that:
Mathematics is all about becoming a creative thinker and NOT a calculator.
Mathematics is not about numbers, equations, or the number of ticks in your book: it is about UNDERSTANDING.
Mathematics is not a spectator sport. The only way to learn Maths is to do Maths!
We will help you to master Mathematics and acquire a deep, long-term, secure and adaptable understanding of the subject by providing quality first teaching in your lessons. Your teachers will plan interactive lessons that involve questioning, short tasks, explanations, demonstrations and discussions between you and your teacher as well as independent work. We will provide the resources that you need so that you are able to solve problems using concrete materials or visual representations of them. Only when you are confident in doing so, would we ask you to work in the abstract.
We expect that the vast majority of pupils will work together on the same lesson content at the same time; however, we will make additional provision for those pupils with a specific SEND that affects their ability to learn in Mathematics. You will be given the opportunity to fully understand, explore and apply your ideas, rather than accelerate through new topics. Additional challenges will be presented by allowing you to investigate your learning in new, alternative and more complex ways. Working in this manner means that you will become fluent in the fundamentals of Mathematics and able to reason mathematically. You will then be able to solve problems by applying your mathematics skills to a variety of problems including those that you will need to break down into a series of simpler steps.
Throughout your lessons, you will be encouraged to use precise mathematical language, as modelled by your teachers, so that your mathematical ideas are conveyed with clarity and precision. You will also be given time to revise key skills and facts such as number bonds, multiplication tables and related division facts. We will help you learn these to the point of automaticity to avoid cognitive overload in the working memory and so enable you to focus on new concepts during the main body of each Mathematics lesson.
As a school, we use Power Maths as the basis of our lessons from Reception to Year 6. This scheme of work and related pupils books has been developed to meet the needs of a teaching for mastery journey; however, teachers will, at their discretion, move away from or supplement this with additional materials, as they see fit, to meet your needs.
Should it become necessary for you to continue your learning at home, perhaps because you are isolating, we will make sure that you have access to appropriate learning materials as far as we are reasonably able to do so. This may include Power Maths materials but may also include materials from White Rose Maths, Times-tables Rock Stars, Numbots and NRICH amongst others.
The extensive discussions that you have with your teachers during lessons will enable both of you to ensure that you have grasped a concept or procedure before moving on. If you have not, your teacher will try to help you immediately so that you can keep up with the rest of the class. Your teacher may adjust their plan for the current or future lessons based on their assessment of you and your peers learning to ensure that you have all mastered a concept before moving on to the next part of the curriculum sequence. Your books will be marked after every lesson and you will be given time in a subsequent lesson to review your own work and respond to any teacher comments.
Throughout the year, you will also complete formal, summative assessments which will be used to track your achievement and progress over the year and your journey through primary school. Your results, along with those of everyone else in school, will be reported to the Subject Leader for Mathematics and the Senior Leadership Team. The Subject Lead will analyse this data to look for trends and identify any children who need further support.
The national curriculum for mathematics aims to ensure that all pupils:
- become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately
- reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language
- can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions